Percy Bysshe Fannin, the Shelley of the Sherlocks. The Keats of the Keyhole. Me and Ephraim.

So she’d needed a shoulder to dig her nails into, and mine had been closest. So there was another shoulder someplace with her name stenciled on it. So there hadn’t been any reason to mention it.

I couldn’t remember a week so hushed since the Giants went west.

I tried her one more time that evening. I tried another girl after her, and I got an excuse and a promise. I had a substantial file of both items. I didn’t want to see the other girl anyhow.

I was a fool. I sat there again Friday. Nobody wrote me any letters except the University of Michigan Alumni Association, looking for contributions. I sent them what I had left of Mrs. Skelly’s largess. Nobody dialed my number, even by mistake. I stared at the back of the door to the reception room.

Apropos of nothing at all, I wondered whatever became of Wrong Way Corrigan.

It was something to do. I wondered whatever became of Schoolboy Rowe. For that matter, whatever became of Doyle Nave, who beat Duke with that pass in the ‘39 Rose Bowl game? Whatever became of Jean Hersholt?

Oh, sure — poor old Jean Hersholt. So then whatever became of Sonny Tiifts? Sonny Tufts? Whatever became of Lucius Beebe? Who the hell was Lucius Beebe? Whatever became of Sir Stafford Cripps?

So it’s my office, I damned well guess I can use it for what I please.

I decided I better get out of there. It was ten to five. I shut the drawer I’d been occupied with. Since I was leaving I had to take my foot out of it anyway.

I was lifting my jacket off the hook when the buzzer rang, meaning that someone had opened the outer door. It could have been another tenant from along the corridor, wanting a little group therapy. Someone like that would just look in.

Nobody did, so I went over and looked out.

There was a man in the reception room. I stared at him.

I decided I was going nuts altogether.

CHAPTER 8

He said his name was Ulysses S. Grant.

I didn’t argue. For at least fifteen seconds all I could do was gape. He was possibly the tallest man I had ever seen. He also might have been the filthiest.

He reached seven feet at the least. He was as gaunt as he would have to be, and there was no way to guess his age, partly because of his sunken cheeks and his oddly dull eyes, and partly because of his beard. The eyes were a shade of gray I had never seen before, almost opaque, like damp cardboard. The beard was scraggly and needed trimming, preferably with garden shears. It and his hair were the color of rotting straw. So were his teeth.

He had on a raincoat. I thought it was a raincoat. Someone had been wearing it to change truck transmissions in. The coat was torn in a few places also, but no more than five or six.

He was grinning at me, but I wasn’t the man he wanted. He wanted someone at the Bowery Mission, maybe the basketball coach.

“Grant,” I said finally. “Like in Appomattox.”

He had a smudged, dog-eared card to prove it. Just the name, nothing else. Cards were the rage that season. I was thinking of having some done up myself. Also just my name. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

“A whim of my father’s,” he said. “His own name was Thaddeus.” He had a voice about four reaches below baritone. “You are Mr. Fannin?”

“There is that possibility,” I said. I nodded, but I could not take my eyes off that coat. It was streaked, splotched, spilled on. Even a lazy research chemist could have had a field day, taking samples from it. In some remote future era it was going to drive an archaeologist insane.

It bothered Ulysses S. Grant not at all. I’ve grown fond of it,” he told me idly. He brushed at something on a sleeve, soot from the Chicago fire. “One of these days I suppose I ought to drop it off to be cleaned.”

“I think so,” I said. “But not an established firm. Maybe you can find a new shop, one that just opened.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand. Why a firm which—”

“Someone just starting out in the business,” I told him. “Trying to make a reputation.”

He laughed. Not a laugh in any ordinary sense. It came honking up out of his throat like a flight of geese out of a marsh. Of course it would. Friday afternoon, and diligent Fannin had to hang around, wondering whatever became of Jeeter Lester. I trudged back into the office and sat down.

I waved him into a chair. Trying to ignore him would have been like trying to ignore Kanchenjunga.

He had opened the raincoat. That didn’t make the day any brighter. Grandma Moses wiped her paint brushes on rags cleaner than the shirt he had on under there. I leaned forward on my arms, pushing a stray pencil back and forth across the blotter.

He was still clucking. “Trying to make a reputation, indeed!

Excellent. Oswald told me to be prepared for your irreverent sense of humor.”

“Oswald did,” I said aimlessly.

“Oswald Fosburgh, yes. It was he who recommended you.”

I was sure of it then. I was a sick man, sicker than I knew. O. J. Fosburgh, attorney at law. His Park Avenue office was not much more plush than the Four Seasons. I picked up the pencil and tossed it into the tray.

“Oswald J. Fosburgh,” I said. “You and he share the same locker at the Harvard Club.”

“Hunk!” said Ulysses S. Grant. It was only one goose this time, caught on the wing by a load of twelve-gauge shot. He slapped himself on the knee. “Indeed, indeed! Ozzie also informed me that you were not particularly subtle. What you mean, of course, is that you cannot conceive of any connection between myself and someone of the stature of O. J. Fosburgh.”

I shrugged. “Okay,” I said. “You’re an eccentric millionaire.”

Ulysses S. Grant pursed his lips. Slowly he began to nod his head. Then he beamed at me.

I had been reaching for a cigarette. I stopped. I put my hands flat on the desk top.

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

I heaved a sigh. Ulysses S. Grant heaved one in sympathy.

“Millions?” I said.

“Actually only thirteen,” he said cheerfully. “And not the principal, merely the interest. To tell the truth it’s all relatively new. Thirteen is what remained after taxes. My father—”

“Old Thaddeus—”

“The same. Yes. He passed away a year or so ago. I was the sole heir. Coffee, I believe it was. South America.”

He believed it was coffee. I had my head in my hands. I hoped I had a handkerchief. I thought I might weep.

Td like someone located, Mr. Fannin. A daughter, by a marriage long since dissolved. I believe the girl is living in Greenwich Village.”

He flicked away some ashes with an unwashed finger which appeared to have enough joints to bend into a square knot. He was studying me with those odd eyes and he missed the standing ashtray by a foot. I was surprised he hadn’t dropped them into a cuff.

“You appear curiously indifferent, Mr. Fannin?”

“No, no,” I said. “Just a little relieved, maybe.”

“Relieved? I’m sorry, I don’t see—”

“Nothing.” I was reaching for the phone directory. “No, I guess I don’t mind looking for people. I just thought it might be some sort of dull security job. I’ve had a little bad luck with them lately.”

“Security? But I still—”

“All that coffee. I thought maybe you had it piled up in the breakfast nook and wanted a watchman.”

More geese went honking southward. Geese, ganders, goslings. I wondered what it would take to offend the man. I dialed the number I wanted and waited.

“You remember an old American League outfielder named Goose Goslin?” I asked idiotically.

“I don’t know baseball,” he said. “Why?”